Thank you very much for your presence. As I just said to the [African Union] Peace and Security Council: if the UN fails in Africa, the UN fails. On the other hand, African leadership is essential to solve African problems. If those two things are true, the only way for the UN to deliver is for a very solid and close partnership with African Union and I am extremely grateful to Chairperson Faki for the excellent development our relations have had in the recent past.
 
We are totally aligned in relations to our economic agendas: the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 that are now the same agenda. I strongly appeal to the international community to make sure that these agendas are fully financed, and also I strongly congratulate the African Union for its very important initiative on corruption. I appeal to the international community to do everything to make sure that illegal financial flows, money laundering and tax evasion do not allow $50 billion dollars to leave the African continent every year. This is a responsibility to support Africa to make sure that African resources remain in Africa to support African development.
 
At the same time, we work very closely in peace and security. I would like to say that we feel a wind blowing in the direction of peace. The visit of the [Prime Minister] of Ethiopia to Eritrea was an amazing success. The recent IGAD decisions on South Sudan and the summit in Khartoum, some decisions of Heads of States in different countries that were in crisis paving the way for future political solutions – all this gives us hope that the African continent will be moving more and more in the right direction on peace and security.
 
But of course, we have very dramatic crisis situations, too. We have four peacekeeping operations, in Mali, the DRC, in South Sudan, in the Central African Republic, where we no longer have traditional peacekeeping; where you have all sorts of armed groups, terrorist operators, we have peacekeepers being killed. So now we are committed to deep reform of our peacekeeping operations in close coordination with the African Union, but also we recognize that peacekeeping is not enough, that we need peace enforcing and counter-terrorism and that the African Union, and its organizations, is particularly suited for those operations. But as it was the case with AMISOM and now the case with G5 Sahel, the way these operations have been conducted in the past they did not have enough support from the international community. We need peace enforcing in Africa, counter-terrorism in Africa, with African forces, but with clear mandates from the Security Council, in my opinion, ideally under Chapter Seven and with predictable funding, namely the funding that comes with assessed contributions.
 
We need to understand that when African troops are fighting terrorists in the Sahel, they are not only protecting the citizens of the Sahel, they are protecting the whole world. The world must be in solidarity with Africa, as African forces are protecting us all. We will be side by side with the African Union to make sure that peace and security in Africa remains a priority for the whole international community.